Q&A with Chris Solinsky

On May 1, in Palo Alto, California, the American 10,000-meter record was broken—but not by the guy most people expected to do it.

On May 1, in Palo Alto, California, the American 10,000-meter record was broken—but not by the guy most people expected to do it. While all the prerace hype focused on former University of Oregon standout Galen Rupp, Chris Solinsky won in 26:59.60, smashing the previous mark by 14 seconds and becoming the first non-African runner to break 27 minutes. Not bad for his first-ever 10,000. Solinsky, a five-time NCAA champion at the University of Wisconsin, is a member of the Oregon Track Club and is coached by Jerry Schumacher. He was the runner-up in the 5000 meters at the 2009 USATF Championships, a performance that earned him a trip to the World Championships in Berlin, where he placed 12th in 13:25.87.

Editor's note: This interview was conducted the week of May 3, 2010.Watch video of the race on Flotrack.org:

RW: I was looking at your previous race results. Have you won a race as a professional?CS: Not too many, but a couple. Maybe less than half a dozen.

So how does it feel to win you first foray into the 10-K–and get an American record on top of that?Incredible. With all the hype and talk about Galen [Rupp] going after the record, that wasn't my first thought going in, to try to go and win. Well I guess I take that back, I wasn't expecting to run fast but I wanted to win. What I've done my whole career, even though it hasn't really been apparent from the results, we just try to get in the best races as possible and a lot of times I go after it and end up blowing up. And that was kind of the case this weekend. I just went after it and I knew there was a chance I could blow up, but the more times you put yourself in the position to get the win, the better off you're going to be.

I know you talked about having a side stitch in a Flotrack interview. Was that the toughest spot in the race for you?That was definitely the hardest thing I had to go through. It put a little bit of doubt in my mind, and at that point that's when we started running pretty quick, too. I had to keep telling myself, "make it one more lap and maybe it will go away." So I just kept plugging away at the laps and finally it did go away with about six laps to go. And that's kind of when I got really excited. I was feeling good the whole time but the cramp was the only thing that I was like "oh man, this can't ruin it now." And once that went away and I felt like more of the excitement was that I was going to finish and that kind of carried me to be able to finish hard.

That was something that surprised me–that you weren't sure that you were going to finish.Definitely. It was my first time running 10,000 meters on the track so I was very intimidated by the distance alone and then you throw in having somebody go after the American record–it's quite the first race to try to jump into. We knew that we were fit, but it's just a matter of battling those mental demons and making sure I felt like I had nothing to lose and just going after it. Sometimes it ends terribly and it hurts really bad, but sometimes you hit it on the right day and it turns out well.

You mentioned mental demons. You were thinking about the pace you were running, clicking off these fast laps, and you were worried about that during the race weren't you?Yeah, it's hard not to. There were people every 200 meters yelling off a split, whether it was a 200-meter split or a lap split. It was hard not to hear those. I tried not to pay attention to what lap we were on and what pace we were running, but you always heard it. It was hard to get over hearing when they started saying "63, 64" [for one lap]. It was not too long ago that if I heard 63 or 64 in a 5000 I would have been kind of intimidated. It was kind of hard to block it out, but if anything, the stitch kind of helped take my mind off of the splits.

You made a pretty big move with 900 meters to go. What was going through your head then? Were you feeling good? Did you think you could win?I didn't know that I was going to win until probably 300 meters to go. At that point, I was feeling good but in the past I've definitely made a strong move to the finish from far out and have not been able to sustain it. One of the times was actually against Galen, he ended up catching me in the final meters and just out-leaned me at the line. Those things go through your head when you go to make a move, but at the time I was feeling really good and was ready and willing to take a shot at it. At that time I didn't even know...probably like three or four laps before that I forgot about the pace and I was just psyched that I was feeling good. I never thought even making that move would give me the American record, let alone under 27. I was trying to win the race and then with 200 meters to go was kind of the first time I thought about where I was with respect to time.

What was going through your head during those last 200 meters?Just to get after it as hard as I could.

Get after the time?Yeah. I even tried to reflect back on what we've focused on in practice when it comes to doing speedwork and finishing off a race: Just hold the form and stay as loose as possible. I'm a guy who, it's frustrating to me that sometimes the harder you try, the worse you do. So I just tried to stay as relaxed as possible and step it up a notch every 100 meters and in those last 200 meters, try to do it every 50 meters.